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Research exploring the literacy practices of diverse participants is integral to developing our understanding of literacy. Diverse groups of participants, for example participants with mental health conditions, bring specific ethical considerations and methodological challenges. This paper presents the use of Skype to research literacy practices through qualitative interviews as a solution to such methodological challenges, focussing this discussion on a research project into the mental health literacy practices of students. The ethical concerns of working with participants with mental health conditions are discussed, particularly issues with confidentiality and safety which mean that interviews in both public and private locations could be inappropriate. This paper argues that using Skype allows both participants and researcher to be in private but separate locations, reducing barriers to participation for participants with mental health conditions and minimising the intrusion and anxiety of qualitative interviews. Vignettes from research into the literacy practices of students with mental health conditions are presented to show that using video calling to research literacy practices allows researchers to learn more about participants' literacy practices and the role these practices play in their lives, whilst maintaining comfort and ease for participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the support provided by extended family members to university students has recently been more investigated, it is rarely considered as an element worthy of analysis in its own right. Situated in an international context, this literature review provides a map of research on the support of extended family members to university students and links research to university practitioners and policy makers as a way to promote diversity. The argument is that by facilitating students' support networks, more effective diversity policies can be implemented at the institutional level. Employing the concepts of extended family, funds of knowledge and social support, the review identifies social support that achieves positive outcomes and support which outcomes are less effective. Selected articles (22) were classified, synthesised and analysed by the author. The paper discusses the role of extended families in relation to four sub-groups of students: traditional; non-traditional; international and dropout. The review shows that: a) social support is a cultural-based practice; b) research emphasises positive effects of social support; c) research tends to focus on ethnic minorities, and d) there is an unclear separation between parental and the support provided by extended family members. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for further research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the effects of teenage childbearing on education, working, physical and mental health, and physical activity of young girls in Mexico using two waves of the nationally representative Mexican Family Life Survey. We employ a propensity score matching model that accounts for a rich set of baseline covariates that predict teenage childbearing to attempt to reduce the bias due to confounding variables associated with teenage childbearing. The results demonstrate that teenage childbearing is associated with an increase in the probability of being overweight, and reductions in physical activity and the probability of high school completion. Moreover, the results are consistent when we employ sibling fixed effects to account for unobservable family background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The role of increased schooling on teenage childbirth has been expansively studied especially in developed countries. However, caveats remain in the case of low-income countries especially Sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the impact of increased schooling on the probability of first childbirth at 15 years or younger, 16-17, 18-19, and 20 years or older, in the important context of Uganda – a country with one of the highest adolescent fertility rates in Africa.Design/methodology/approach The empirical analysis uses recent data from the nationally representative Demographic and Health Survey for Uganda conducted in 2011. The authors then adopt a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, estimated using instrumental variables techniques that exploit the exogenous change in schooling impelled by the universal primary education policy enacted in 1997 in Uganda. The empirical approach compares the fertility outcomes for women born in 1984-1992 (i.e. exposed to the policy) to those born in 1973-1981 (i.e. non-exposed).Findings The authors find that a one-year increase in schooling lowers the probability of first childbirth at age the age of 15 years or younger, 16-17, 18-19, and 20 years or older by nearly 8.2, 9.2, 9.4, and 9.5 percentage points, respectively. Also, pathways through which education impacts teenage motherhood included information access through the media, increased literacy, prenatal care utilization, marital status, and unhealthy sexual behavior.Originality/value The paper uses nationally representative survey data to scrutinize the causal influence of schooling on the probability of first childbirth using the 1997 universal primary education in Uganda as a natural experiment to identify the impact of schooling. The study recommends that expanding primary schooling opportunities for girls may be an effective strategy toward accelerated reductions in teenage fertility in Uganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on what has happened since Elliott (“Dynamic Assessment in Educational Settings: Realising Potential”, 2003) in those applications of dynamic assessment that he considered. There continues to be two broad applications, one, largely researcher led, and the other, largely practitioner led, although there are examples of researcher–practitioners. Since Elliott, arguably, it is now relatively easy both to reach consensus over constructs and assessment processes and also to mutually respect differences through clarity over professional and assessment purposes. There is a fuller account than Elliott provided of educational psychologists’ practice in the UK, which partly serves to highlight the difference in purpose and imperative to research and evaluate outcomes that persists for researchers and practitioners. The paper concludes by arguing that the premise in Elliott’s title of “realising potential” was always contestable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose – The paper aims to explore the purposes of school libraries as they are viewed by teenagers attending a high school in northern England. Design/methodology/approach – The work is based on qualitative data contributed by 245 youngsters. Their material was coded inductively and frequency counts were generated in order to determine the balance of the data in relation to individual themes. Findings – Typically, the school library was understood as an area that made available books either for pleasure reading or academic purposes. No participant referred either to the work of librarians or to the value of libraries in enabling the user to find information in support of personal interests. Research limitations/implications – The research took place in only one school and it may well have been the case that many students who were apathetic towards school libraries simply declined the opportunity to participate in the work. Practical implications – Although the attitudes of the young people who contributed data were to an overwhelming degree constructive, key gaps were evident in their awareness of the potential of a school library. These are best rectified by managers developing their facility in such a way that it serves to demonstrate effectively to students the roles that the school library can play in a diversity of situations. Originality/value – Much of the published literature dealing with the purposes of school libraries and the prerequisites necessary to ensure their effectiveness pays little regard to the ideas of young people themselves. This paper goes some way towards remedying the deficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although in recent years, researchers have shown increasing interest in achievement-related emotions, academic boredom included, still the vast majority of the studies that have been carried out on the issue, so far, employed solely or primarily quantitative methods, were largely confined to the field of psychology and were conducted in a limited number of countries. The purpose of this work is to bridge the gap in the literature by presenting a case from an Eastern/Central European country (Poland), based on the qualitative mode of data collection and processing. The paper offers a detailed sociological description and alanysis of university students' behavours when bored in class applying the taxonony of boredom coping strategies proposed in the relevant literature. The study also introduces the notion of classroom social morphology and its relationship with the employment of various boredom coping strategies and also readdresses the concept of class-related anticipatory boredom and the idea of educational burnout experienced by some students at the end of their studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Storyboarding is one common strategy used in teaching young people digital media. This paper argues that in adolescents' literacy practices, they engage in production on the go. The metaphor is described in this paper to put forward the argument that storyboarding can be a retrospective and redundant literacy activity in adolescents' school literacy practices when it is not their inherent practice to engage in a two-step process in digital media production, i.e., design intended to precede production. Drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of New Literacy Studies, this study adopts an ethnographic perspective to gain insights into 10 14-year-old Chinese adolescents' literacy practices in Singapore. Data for this paper were collected over a period of eight months from participant observations, with video-and-audio recordings, semi-structured and in-depth text-elicited group and individual interviews, the adolescents' research diaries and artefacts from their literacy practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether and in what ways young people's perceptions and experiences of higher education (HE) can facilitate the transmission within their social networks of social capital both upwardly (from child to parent) and horizontally (from sibling to sibling), and thus can potentially provide bridging capital to family members, especially in families with little or no prior experience of HE. It utilises data from a project that explored the embedded nature of decision-making about HE amongst a group of 'potentially recruitable' adults and their wider networks. The study researched 16 networks, and the resultant sample of 107 individuals included six teenagers and 15 young people in their twenties. The paper concludes that, despite the general emphasis within existing theoretical approaches to network capital on the downward transmission of social capital, the educational experiences of younger generations can be critical in shaping the perceptions of other (including older) network members, albeit not always in ways that encourage formal educational participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite what students and teachers believe about their own engagement with New Literacies and their connection with print-based, school sanctioned literacies, New Literacies and print-based literacies are not unconnected (Alvermann, 2001; Alexander, 2006; Baird & Fisher, 2005-2006).Adolescents are able to navigate adeptly the old and New Literacies (Lankshear &Knobel, 2006). They move through and between paper-based and New Literacies for academic, economic, and social purposes at school, at work, and at home. Given the quantity of time students spend online, it seems foolish to ignore the role of the Internet in the lives of students and the effects of enabling the instantiation of that role in students' academic lives. This paper describes the experience of introducing a blog into an English literature classroom in an alternative education classroom over the course of two years and how the students there reconstructed the blog into a third space for identity construction. It also discusses the effects of student online literacies on pedagogy and students and to what use knowledge of that role can be put in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, drawing upon a recent study of youth post-compulsory educational and occupational decision-making, argues for a culturalist perspective to understand the persistence of class-based inequalities within VET. The paper begins by outlining two broadly distinct perspectives within current research into youth: an 'individualist' approach influenced by the work of Ulrich Beck and a 'culturalist' approach influenced by Pierre Bourdieu. Findings from the author's own study of a sample of AVCE students are then employed to interrogate the explanatory utility of these two perspectives. The students, working-class high achievers, exhibited a strong subjective sense of choice and individual responsibility combined with a tacit sense of class voiced in discourses that constructed a 'practical' rather than 'academic' self and which actively resisted the value of higher education. It is concluded from this that a Bourdieu-influenced culturalist methodology offers the greatest potential to understand how class-based educational identities may interrelate with apparently individualised identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines aspects and predictors of actual and hidden dropout among immigrant students in general, and among Israeli students of Ethiopian origin, in particular. A hidden dropout is a student who is often absent from school or physically in class but is passive and does not actively take part in the learning process. The subject of this study derives from research evidence showing that the dropout rates of Israeli adolescents of Ethiopian origin are higher than those of their peers who are not of Ethiopian origin. We investigated differences between normative learners, hidden dropout youth and adolescents who are disengaged from the educational system. The predictors included perceived discrimination, social support and collective identities; 374 adolescents of Ethiopian origin completed self-report questionnaires. The major findings show that the hidden dropouts group was characterised by a pattern of high parental encouragement but a lack of support from teachers. Implications of the results, both for theory and for practice, are discussed, followed by suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence suggests that increasingly young adolescents are finishing school with poor literacy skills limiting their access to further education, training and employment. This has lifelong effects in terms of their economic participation and health and wellbeing. This paper examines the spatial practices of one school's approach to improving literacy outcomes for its Years 8 and 9 students, in order to increase positive pathways after school. It shows how staff at this school have begun to work collaboratively with each other and community members in trying to address the reading needs of their students. Using the conceptual frameworks of spatial theory and reflection the paper will share the conceived and perceived spatial practices of staff identified in interview data. We argue that when ongoing reflective practice occurs potential transformative or 'third space', practices result; ensuring positive literacy learning outcomes for all students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of short-term migratory movements by parents on the educational outcomes of teenagers in a region of Poland. Using survey and administrative data for lower secondary pupils, the empirical approach exploits variation in emigration within families over time. Estimates suggest that parental employment abroad has small, positive or no impact on pupils' grades, depending on circumstances surrounding the migration experience. Parental education, family situation, the economic environment and duration of the migratory spell are pivotal to outcomes. No negative effects are found, which contradicts the general public opinion in Poland that migration is detrimental to children's education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a critical and systematic review of 52 articles published from 2000 to 2012 about research conducted in Turkey concerning adolescents’ social and emotional learning needs. In correspondence with international research, articles were examined across three categories in which adolescent needs could be addressed by educational programmes. The categories examined were attitudes toward self and others, positive social behaviours, and social skills. In conclusion, we summarise several trends along with gaps that researchers need to address to derive stronger implications for policy-making and for curriculum development that links more directly with social and emotional learning in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents the theoretical and empirical foundations of the TOEFL Junior® assessment and its development process. The TOEFL Junior test was developed to address the increasing need for objective measures of English language proficiency for young adolescent learners, who are being introduced to English as a second or foreign language at a much younger age than ever before. This paper presents the test purposes and intended uses, target population, target language use domains, and test constructs of the TOEFL Junior test. Also included is a description of the overall test structure and scoring system, which demonstrates how the constructs are operationalized. Finally, we outline research topics to support the interpretive argument of the use of the test. This document is expected to serve as a reference point during investigations of validity evidence to support the intended test uses over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study describes the theoretical and practical studies at an adolescent research Center in the School of Education at an American university. Additionally, researchers' views are explored regarding the educational environment, activities, and the assessment process in character education. The case study design used in this paper is based on qualitative research methods. The participants comprised 9 researchers who took part in the Center's studies. The data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, and document analysis. Content analysis was applied to analyze the data of the research. Findings of this paper reveal that the research Center conducted studies on the positive aspects of adolescent development. Additionally, educational environment, activities, and assessment processes in character education are explained in light of the participants' views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students attending schools today not only learn about formal academic subjects, they also learn social and emotional skills. Whole-school restorative practices (RP) is an approach which can be used to address student misbehaviour when it occurs, and as a holistic method to increase social and emotional learning in students. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of RP on student behaviour from the perspectives of students and teachers. Six schools participated in interviews and focus groups. Students and teachers were asked about the use of RP and the impact on behaviour. Students and teachers identified five main themes: greater harmony, increased empathy towards others, awareness of one’s own behaviour and being accountable for that, increased respect, and reflective thinking. These aspects increase students’ social skills. This paper discusses a new framework which describes the positive impact of RP on student behaviour and thinking. The findings have broad implications for school communities and highlight the need to move towards more relational behaviour management approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the causal effect of teenage childbearing on educational attainment using two cohorts of Australian twins and their relatives. Our main finding is that the negative effect of teenage childbearing on educational attainment appears to be small. We find no difference in educational attainment between teen mothers and their identical twin sisters. Data on the relatives of the twins enable us to compare a teen mother with both her twin sister and her other sibling sisters. When twin sisters are used as a control group instead of sibling sisters, the estimated difference in educational attainment is much smaller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies about young people suggest a need to change the way researchers and policy-makers have traditionally understood the concepts of youth, transitions to adulthood, educational participation and the need for young people's voice to be heard. For many young women the taken-for-granted features of everyday life such as family, social, education and paid work are the priorities in their lives. Yet those priorities are frequently masked in large-scale studies, resulting in homogenising the diversity of young people's experiences and abstracting educational engagement from other parts of their lives. The study reported in this paper approaches the issue of young women's construction and defining of their identities in interaction with the broad institutional milieu that is part of their everyday experiences. This approach seeks to understand this lived experience through the use of photo-narratives. The paper explores a rationale for this approach in methodological and ethical terms. It allows for an exploration of the complexity of young women's multiple identities and the changing nature of young people's engagement with post-compulsory senior secondary education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of whether giving birth as a teenager has negative economic consequences for the mother remains controversial despite substantial research. In this paper, we build upon existing literature, especially the literature that uses the experience of teenagers who had a miscarriage as the appropriate comparison group. We show that miscarriages are not random events, but rather are likely correlated with (unobserved) community-level factors, casting some doubt on previous findings. Including community-level fixed effects in our specifications lead to important changes in our estimates. By making use of information on the timing of miscarriages as well as birth control choices preceding the teenage pregnancies we construct more relevant control groups for teenage mothers. We find evidence that teenage childbearing likely reduces the probability of receiving a high school diploma by 5 to 10 percentage points, reduces annual income as a young adult by $1,000 to $2,400, and may increase the probability of receiving cash assistance and decrease years of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past 20 years, youth services in England have increasingly articulated their work in terms of curriculum, yet youth work academics have consistently maintained that a youth work curriculum is anathema. This paper argues that youth work necessarily has a curriculum; however, it is not the formal school curriculum, nor is it explicitly focused on either the efficient transmission of knowledge or the successful achievement of pre-specified outcomes, rather it is based on the 'process' of learning. The explicit articulation of the process of youth work through a curriculum promotes and sustains its unique practice against the external threats of unfavourable government policy. While the curriculum debate is unique to the English youth services, it may offer important lessons for the articulation of youth work in other settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks whether employment during high school impacts youths' grade point average. Unlike much of the prior literature, it allows for the endogeneity of the hours and dropout decisions, uses ASVAB test scores, and tests whether youth employment is dynamic. The results indicate that high school employment and its lag have small, negative impacts on academic grade point average for both males and females. The hours effects diminish when a fixed person effect is included, and they become statistically insignificant when hours are instrumented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L2 acquisition is a complicated process in which many parameters intertwine. Reported strategy use in L2 learning has been extensively researched in relation to factors that are likely to determine it, such as positive attitudes towards English as a foreign language (EFL) learning. In this paper, we investigated another potential determinant of reported strategy use, international orientation, based on the concepts of international posture [Yashima, T. (2009). International posture and the ideal L2 self in the Japanese EFL context. In Z. Dörnyei & E. Ushioda (Eds.),Motivation, language identity and the L2 self(pp. 144–163). Bristol: Multilingual Matters] and ideal L2 self (Dörnyei, Z. (2005).The psychology of the language learner: Individual differences in second language acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum], alongside attitudinal factors (importance and enjoyment of learning) and environmental factors (parents’ EFL knowledge). Based on quantitative data from 329 Greek secondary school students, we employed confirmatory factor analysis to test whether international orientation fully or partially mediates intended learning effort as illustrated by strategy use. We concluded that international orientation partially mediates parents’ EFL knowledge, as assessed by their children, and attitudes to language learning to predict motivated strategy use. We discuss pedagogical implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the quality of school life (QSL) of two ‘model pupils’ in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, Finland and Korea, and investigates students’ views on the central aspects of QSL (general satisfaction, peer relations and teacher–student relations) using PISA 2012 data. It also seeks to interpret how specific institutional and sociocultural aspects are linked to QSL. The analyses show that Finnish and Korean adolescents’ views on QSL are less positive compared with the OECD average; Finnish adolescents’ views on QSL are more positive than those of Korean adolescents regardinggeneral satisfactionandpeer relationsbut are not clearly related toteacher–student relations. Since Finnish and Korean adolescents’ views on QSL partly differ from those of their Nordic and East Asian counterparts, the distinct Nordic or East Asian image of QSL could not be revealed in the study. This article proposes that QSL demands more attention in the era of ‘rankings and benchmarked educational models’, with consideration to the universality and uniqueness of institutional, sociocultural and historical factors of one’s own and others’ schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reports on a consultative paper submitted by the British government on the education and training needs of the 16-18 year old age group to local authorities, teacher associations and employer and trade union organizations. Issues on which debate is needed.

This paper presents a time series analysis of the socio-economic factors influencing the propensity of 16-year-olds to stay on in full-time education in England and Wales. The econometric methodology employed relies on co-integration and 'general to specific' techniques. The results suggest that the main factors influencing staying on are the rate of return to education, changing social class structure, unemployment rates and the introduction of special employment and training measures such as the Youth Training Scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses changes in the educational policy for 14-19 year-old students which began in 1980 in Great Britain. Description of the 14-19 education and training system; Organization and funding structure; Stages of development of a national 14-19 education system; Establishment of a national qualifications framework; Expectations and planning for the 14-19 phase education.

Background and Aims If socio-economic disadvantage is associated with more adolescent smoking, but less participation in tertiary education, and smoking and tertiary education are both associated with heavier drinking, these may represent opposing pathways to heavy drinking. This paper examines contextual variation in the magnitude and direction of these associations. Design Comparing cohort studies. Setting United Kingdom. Participants Participants were from the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS58; n = 15 672), the British birth cohort study (BCS70; n = 12 735) and the West of Scotland Twenty-07 1970s cohort (T07; n = 1515). Measurements Participants self-reported daily smoking and weekly drinking in adolescence (age 16 years) and heavy drinking (> 14/21 units in past week) in early adulthood (ages 22-26 years). Parental occupational class (manual versus non-manual) indicated socio-economic background. Education beyond age 18 was coded as tertiary. Models were adjusted for parental smoking and drinking, family structure and adolescent psychiatric distress. Findings Respondents from a manual class were more likely to smoke and less likely to enter tertiary education (e.g. in NCDS58, probit coefficients were 0.201 and -0.765, respectively; P < 0.001 for both) than respondents from a non-manual class. Adolescent smokers were more likely to drink weekly in adolescence (0.346; P < 0.001) and more likely to drink heavily in early adulthood (0.178; P < 0.001) than adolescent non-smokers. Respondents who participated in tertiary education were more likely to drink heavily in early adulthood (0.110 for males, 0.182 for females; P < 0.001 for both) than respondents with no tertiary education. With some variation in magnitude, these associations were consistent across all three cohorts. Conclusions In Britain, young adults are more likely to drink heavily both if they smoke and participate in tertiary education (college and university) despite socio-economic background being associated in opposite directions with these risk factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – School has been neglected as a source of stress and strain resulting from its inevitable conflict with work and family role demands among married, working students. The meager research available has examined only work-school (not school-work) conflict among adolescents and college students and only three studies (two unpublished) have developed measures of conflict involving work, family, and school without studying its antecedents and consequences. The purpose of this paper is to examine all six school-work-family interrole conflicts and their effects on subjective stress and burnout. It was hypothesized that the greater the conflict between family, work, and school roles, the greater the subjective stress and burnout and that women experience more work-family-school conflicts than do men. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 100 working married adult students completed self-report demographic questionnaire, school-work-family conflict, subjective stress, and burnout scales. Findings – Regression results revealed that school-work (but not work-school) conflict was the only one of the six interrole conflicts examined that contributed to subjective stress and burnout. Women reported greater work-family conflict and family-work conflict. There were no differences between men and women involving school; where gender plays no role, it causes no conflict. Research limitations/implications – Scholars interested in interrole conflict involving family and work should expand the scope of their theories and research to include the school role. Originality/value – The present study was the first to examine all six school-work-family interrole conflicts and their effects on subjective stress and burnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence suggests secondary teachers are increasingly in need of strategies to support students' literacy development, particularly in the area of reading. Secondary teachers however, are typically trained to be, and often see themselves as, disciplinary experts rather than literacy teachers. The purpose of this paper is to introduce an appropriate model for adolescent readers. This paper draws on two research projects focused on improving literacy learning in the secondary context. Short vignettes describe each school context and outline the approaches used to support their students. Findings show strategies to improve and support students' literacy learning, particularly reading, need to be student-centred and appropriate for adolescents rather than a 'top-down' approach. A whole school, collaborative approach that acknowledges the distinct needs and strength of students is shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper describes the method of construction and standardization of a tool to measure examination anxiety of adolescent students. 2030 students belonging to the age group of 13-15 years from 19 schools under West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, participated in this research. The first draft of examination anxiety scale consisted 40 items. After reviewing the items and item analysis, the number of items were reduced to 38. EFA was carried out on obtained data. EFA revealed that total 21 items having factor loading greater than .40, are selected. They distributed under four factors such as, Bodily symptoms, Cognitive, Emotional reaction and behavioural reaction. CFA was executed on another sample group, consisted of 402 number of adolescent students of age group13-15. CFA results also supported the results of EFA. All the goodness of fit indices showed that the model is a good fit model. For concurrent validity, Examination Anxiety Scale made by researcher and Test Anxiety Inventory by Spielberger were administered on the same occasion on 110 school students of the age group13-15. Coefficient of correlation of two scales was estimated. The validity of Examination anxiety Scale is 0.71. The reliability coefficient of the examination anxiety scale using test-retest, split half and Cronbach's alpha methods were 0.801, 0.767, 0.764 respectively. Norms show that 16 percent of the students belong to the high examination anxiety group, 66 percent of the students in average examination anxiety group and 18 percent in low examination anxiety group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's and adolescents are one of the most vulnerable categories in regard with psychosocial problems. The changing patterns and structure of social life, especially transition of family system from traditional to nuclear, reduced social interaction and technological outburst are some of the many reasons that makes the scenario more complex. Recent empirical evidences show the increasing number of adolescence involvement in delinquency, sexual, substance abuse and rising issues of mental health. The period of adolescence is sensitive in regard with biopsychosocial changes and it is necessary to address these issues by enabling and equipping them with skills to face those challenges. Present system of education limits its role in enhancing such skills among the adolescence. Psychiatry, Psychology and Social Work interventions have reasonably advanced in dealing with mental illness but they have done very poorly with the mental health, especially the preventive aspects. In this context positive approach that emphasis on positive mental health deserves a high place. Life skill education is widely accepted as a tool of intervention in enhancing skill and capabilities to cope up with the daily demands of life, especially among a unique segment like adolescents. The present paper is based on the psychosocial intervention done through life skill education among adolescents, who are having psychosocial problems as per the school counseling records. A single group pretest and post test Quasi experimental design guided the study. Psychological well being and Self esteem have assessed in pre and post intervention. Result of the study indicates the intervention have significantly influenced in enhancing mental health of adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on gender differences in adolescents' emotional and social skills and competences is quite scarce. Research has rather focused on exploring gender differences in emotional intelligence which denotes the ability of identifying and understanding emotions. Further examination of emotional and social functioning in relation to demographic characteristics may prove useful to researchers and practitioners searching for a better insight into development of adolescents. This paper presents a summary of the results we obtained in a cross-sectional study that was carried out on a convenience sample of 458 high school students. Data were collected as part of a larger study of characteristics of academically underachieved adolescents. Among other measures, participants filled out the Profile of Social and Emotional Competences (PSEC) - a multidimensional questionnaire which aims at measuring seventeen emotional and social competences. Girls scored higher in expression of emotions, self-presentation, empathy, responsibility in social relationships, gratification and support, interpersonal engagement, ability to develop positive interpersonal relationships, assertiveness, communication and cooperation, while boys scored higher in emotional self-regulation and flexibility in emotions and behaviors. For significant differences, the effect size ranged from 0.22 to 0.94 (M = 0.43; median = 0.39). The findings are relevant in interpreting individual differences in how adolescents gain acceptance and popularity or are rejected in their peer groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Middle years education is featured on the education agenda at this time as never before. Identifiable in national policy documents, the separation of young adolescent education, typically represented as middle year's education, marks a relatively new category for Australian school students. As the peak national professional association, the Middle Years of Schooling Association (MYSA) is of interest when considering the ways in which young adolescence is formed into categories, most typically aligned with age and stage. This research explores how MYSA, as an organisation that promotes itself as an advocate of young adolescents, has represented these young people through its website, quarterly newsletters, and bi-annual journal over the last 10 years. Text analysis, positive or negative framing, along with text analysis using Leximancer software to create themes and their relationships, reveals a consistently positive and individualistic understanding of middle years students. It is affirmed that MYSA reflects what it promotes as its aims as an advocate for young adolescents; and through its textual devices the professional association reinforces the popular tendency to label and define subgroups, however, in this case, in positive frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]